Suspected power grid saboteur: 160 targets in Germany

The Federal Prosecutor's Office has taken over the investigation against the man who is said to be the sole perpetrator behind the series of attacks on the German power grid. Against the “German national Daniel V.” There is “suspect of attempted and completed unconstitutional sabotage as well as attempted and completed disruption of public operations,” said a spokeswoman for Federal Attorney General Jens Rommel on Thursday evening. The first offense carries a prison sentence of up to five years, and the second offense carries a prison sentence of up to ten years.

The 48-year-old suspect was initially held in custody in Aachen after his arrest on Tuesday. Now he is to be brought before the investigating judge at the Federal Court of Justice in Karlsruhe. When this will happen is “still unclear,” said Ines Peterson, senior public prosecutor at the Federal Court of Justice, to the taz on Friday morning.

In a letter of responsibility, Daniel V. had previously taken responsibility for attacks on a substation near the Jänschwalde brown coal power plant in southern Brandenburg. The first letter, with a postmark from North Rhine-Westphalia, was received by the taz. Afterwards, similar letters also reached the police and other editorial offices. “Generating electricity from fossil fuels is a crime that causes untold suffering,” it says.

The letters also described in detail home-made launchers made of pipes, rods, New Year's Eve rockets and timers. This was intended to shoot thin wire ropes onto high-voltage lines. Short circuits should be triggered via the resulting connection to earth. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, this was achieved "in the area of ​​the Turnow-Preilack (Brandenburg) and Bergheim-Rheidt (North Rhine-Westphalia) substations". As a result, several power plant blocks were shut down at the brown coal sites in Jänschwalde in Brandenburg and Niederaussem and Neurath in North Rhine-Westphalia. However, there were no major power outages.

It remains completely unclear why Daniel V. gave his full name and registration address in the letters to the taz and the police. This is very unusual for letters of confession. This triggered a large-scale manhunt that lasted for days, in which around 1,700 police officers were involved and in which the Hambach Forest near the huge Hambach brown coal open-cast mine in the Rhineland was also combed. However, the search in the forest, where activists are still protesting with constant vigils against the environmental destruction caused by brown coal mining, was initially unsuccessful.

Daniel V. was arrested quite by chance on Tuesday morning. Two highway police officers noticed flattened grass that led from a dirt road 200 meters into bushes near Weisweiler in the Rhenish lignite mining area west of Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia's Interior Minister Herbert Reul (CDU) told the state parliament's Interior Committee. The police officers weren't actually involved in the search for the man, "but they showed exactly the right instinct," praised Reul.

According to the Interior Minister, Daniel V. hid in the bushes in a well-camouflaged tent that was not visible to police helicopters. A video that has now been published by the police and recorded with the police officers' body cameras shows the officers approaching Daniel V. with their pistols drawn. He then apparently allowed himself to be arrested without resistance. However, what the police officers shouted to the suspect and how Daniel V. reacted cannot be heard - the published video has no audio track, only images can be seen.

The investigative authorities apparently assume that Daniel V. is solely responsible for the series of attacks. CSU Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt spoke of suspected “climate terrorism” by a lone perpetrator. “We have not only caught the suspected perpetrator of the attacks, but we have possibly prevented further attacks,” said NRW Interior Minister Reul in front of the Interior Committee of the Düsseldorf state parliament.

Finally, a notebook with handwritten information on more than 160 previous and possible further sabotage targets was discovered in Daniel V.'s mobile home, an old Mercedes found near the Hambach Forest. In addition, according to information provided by the suspect, more than 40 rocket launchers were found in North Rhine-Westphalia alone.

"He was still on the move and wanted to continue. This game ended today," said Reul on the day of the arrest. “At the moment everything indicates that it was a lone perpetrator and that everything was out of his hands.” What remains striking, however, is that the series of attacks on the power grid began exactly the week in which the federal government blamed Russia for the drone attacks on Leipzig Airport at the beginning of August. Since then, Russia and the Federal Republic have imposed sanctions on themselves: for example, the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the “Russian House” in Berlin have been closed.

However, in the letter of confession to the taz attributed to Daniel V, the author describes himself as a lone perpetrator: it says that he acted alone - "without ever telling anyone about it." He is writing this because he fears that the acts would otherwise be attributed to the “left-wing scene”. “They have nothing to do with it.”

The more than 80-year-old mother of the suspect, with whom the taz was able to speak in detail in person after receiving the letter of confession at her home in Gevelsberg on the edge of the southern Ruhr area, also apparently believes her son is responsible for the crimes: Daniel V., who completed his medical studies but then worked as a guitar maker and was most recently unemployed, is very talented and interested in technology, she said - and has a great sense of justice, especially when it comes to environmental issues.